If You Want to Hang On, Let Go

I had a progressive roommate in San Francisco (is there any other kind?) who introduced me to the title concept. "The only way to hang on is to let go," she intoned, in her sharpest new-age accent.

Are we ready to do that with our content?

Are you ready to tell your boss that you're going to take the white paper for which you just paid US$6500, and give it away without asking for so much as an e-mail address in return?

Don't tell her that I told you do to it; tell her David Meerman Scott told you to do it. And he should know.

"Lose control of your information," he counsels. "We in marketing have controlled the external dialog for ages, but there is no control online anymore, so you're better off throwing out the mechanisms for and pretense of control. Make all your e-content free without registration or e-mail address; if it's decent content, it will get shared a lot more. I have clients who discover that 20, 30, 40 times more people are using their content."

What does that bode for you?

It means you can't leave your white papers, Web content, case studies and articles entirely up to your writer (unless your writer is David Meerman Scott, I suppose).

YOU need to infuse them with the schmaltz and chutzpah that will get people talking about your
IDEAS and your POSITIONS,
not your products and services.

Your writers need to understand this, and they need to see that you're willing to let go in order to hang on.